David H. Finnie

“The Middle East was not a wilderness, and the people there were not savages: if anything they were over civilized. Too many American newcomers to the East saw it in frontier terms.”

“Today we are apt to think of the Middle East, however defined, as something of a geographical unit. During the first half of the nineteenth century, however, and in fact until the Suez Canal was opened in 1869, the Mediterranean and the Levant were physically and psychologically very remote from the Red Sea, Arabia, and the Persian Gulf.”

“For eighteen centuries avid and pious Christians of divergent sects had overlaid the simplicity of Biblical scenes with tawdry symbolism, rude commercialism, and pious hokum.”

“Americans were known for a zealous and often immoderate attachment to the United States and all it represented.”

“The English are rapidly expanding their conquests in Afghanistan [ca. 1840]”

“Calvinism and Islam had this much in common: neither was just a religion; both were social systems.”